Re: The Indian Ocean event was a magnitude 9+ earthquake.
Not as initially measured by the Jakarta Geophysical Office...(*) Anyway, here's a footnote re: hurricanes.
More mega-hurricanes loom on horizon
By Michael Coren
CNN
Friday, September 3, 2004 Posted: 10:21 AM EDT (1421 GMT)
(CNN) -- As Hurricane Frances bears down on the United States, weather trackers are sounding the alarm. Yet Frances may be first in a series of massive, powerful storms to march across the Atlantic in coming years.
Scientists say more storms like Frances -- both very intense and very large -- are likely.
"Over the past few years, we've seen an increasing trend toward greater activity in the Atlantic Basin and increased strength in storms," said Marshall Shepherd, a research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "[That] has been leading us to believe that we are going to start seeing more intense hurricanes. That may be bearing itself out right now."
A combination of natural cycles and warming ocean temperatures from global warming may be fueling the destructive storms. Scientists like Shepherd employ an array of satellites, aircraft and computer models to answer those questions in their mission to comprehend the Earth's climate.
"Compared to 20 years ago, we've seen dramatic improvement in our track forecasting," Shepherd said. "But we still have a long way to go."
The legendary storms appear in the Atlantic Ocean like clockwork between June and November.
The hurricanes batter coastlines, destroying homes, coastal towns and beaches over their lifetimes during which they can expend the energy of 10,000 nuclear bombs, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. Although scientists track, monitor and probe them relentlessly, they can do little about them.
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